Well, hello, hello. I wanted to share some thoughts that I’ve been having around AI, how I’m leveraging AI, and maybe some unique perspectives.
Everywhere I look — and you may too, depending on what platforms you’re on and where you’re looking online, podcasts and things like that — there is this huge push to having AI agents and using AI to set up everything to be automated in your business to create freedom.
It reminds me so much of the gold rush that happened in like 2017 to 2020, 2021. Make money while you sleep. Passive income. Just float on your flamingo float in a pool and you’ll make oodles of money doing nothing.
And we’re experiencing that again, because that dream obviously sounds appealing to some extent — although I would never want to do that, because I love the work that I do. I’m not trying to get rid of the work that I do. I love the work that I do.
I want to do the work that I do better. That’s my focus. I’m not trying to eliminate work. I’m trying to do the work that I do better, more impactful, more powerful out in the world.
But it’s the same shiny dream that is now wearing a different outfit, wearing different clothing. And it’s the clothing of put AI agents in your business, and then you will not have to do anything, you will not have to hire people — which is incredible, because who wants a team, and team is hard.
And you know what, team is hard. It is so hard. However, it’s everything.
It’s everything. The right team of actual human beings will catapult your business in the direction that you want it to go in, which is to be of service. Most people, including myself, most people in our community are mission-driven businesses. They are businesses that are their legacy work. They’re here to make impact. They’re not here to just make money. Money is the byproduct of the service that they are providing.
So be careful. Be leery of how AI is being positioned.
The two things I believe AI actually has the power to do
I want to share how I’m using AI and why I believe AI has the power to do two powerful things.
Number one, it can make what you are delivering — delivering to your clients, delivering to the world, to your audience — more effective, more beautiful, more impactful. Which I love, and I’ll share what I mean by that.
And it can help you not have amnesia about the gold that you are creating. It’s about using AI as this accountability and creation partner.
Because AI doesn’t have emotions. AI isn’t afraid. AI doesn’t need courage or confidence to take bold action, like we do. AI isn’t bogged down with paradigms and limiting beliefs.
So AI can be your ultimate co-creative partner on your incredible intellectual property — what you’re here to create in the world, what you’re here to deliver to the world.
I want to talk about how I’m doing this. But also the why. The why.
The why
I’ve been in business since 2018. That’s when I started Julie Ciardi LLC, and that’s when I truly started to develop this business that I have today.
It took 18 months from that point to really catapult it into revenue generating. And then it’s gone through evolutions, as of course it should — because as we grow and we increase our confidence and courage and abilities and mastery, what we offer to the world also evolves. It deepens and it evolves. That’s how this works.
It’s just been such a journey of that growth.
But here’s what I can tell you. In the last year of leveraging AI — and it’s been really a year, less than a year of really bringing it in — it has catapulted the results in my business and the results of my clients. And it’s not because we’re just doing things more effective and efficient and without humans.
What’s happening is a deepening of mastery. Of your own mastery. Of my own mastery.
I use Claude, and again, you can use any AI you want to use. It’s the effectiveness of the AI to deepen your work in the world. And its effectiveness in the world comes from how much you are putting in and spending time with it — for it to get to know you, to know your IP, to know your strategy and where you’re going and the ideas that you have, and how much you know your dream clients and your market and your industry.
You have to spend that time.
I am working with my Claude every single day, almost all day long, as my co-creative partner in the work that I am meant to do in this world.
I’m not sending it out to the internet to build my stuff
I’m not using it as a co-creative partner because I’m having it go out into the web and out into all its knowledge to build my stuff. Not at all.
I’ve developed projects in Claude that are fed with my stuff. My IP. My years of thinking.
And guess what happens when you are a human? All that knowledge, all that expertise, all of that thinking and ideas and IP — we forget. We forget it’s gold.
We will do a podcast two years ago and then forget the power that it had, and people saying, oh my God, this resonated with me, this helped me. We’ll forget, because we’re human.
Or if you’re like me — I’m a 2/4 from a Human Design, IGNITE Her® Frequency standpoint. Two-fours cannot see their own genius.
My Claude projects can.
I am using AI to create a quantum leap of mastery. A quantum leap in getting my IP, my thought leadership, the value that I want to bring to the world, out into the world.
That’s how I’m using AI.
What it’s doing for my clients
The beautiful thing is it’s helping my clients so much, because I’ve created and leveraged AI in the delivery of our programs. They can ask me questions — we call them Julie bots. I fed the bots with my language, with my ideas, with my IP, so that my over a thousand clients around the world can actually utilize the AI as if they were talking to me, so that it can go faster. They can go deeper. It’s so powerful.
The other thing I’m using AI to do with our clients is this. I will do a live training, and I can take that transcript of that live training and very quickly develop a resource, a tool, a workbook that is on brand. So it’s beautiful. And it’s taking the key things that I just taught and shared and putting it into something usable and valuable for our clients.
It’s incredible.
So I’m able to go faster, yes. And be more efficient, yes. But not because I’m eliminating humans.
It’s because I am literally magnifying the value of my IP, my thought leadership, what I’m here to do and say and what I’m here to teach, into the stratosphere — because I’ve built these projects out.
I’ve built my Claude out as my brain on steroids. My brain, my knowledge, my life work is there in my AI, without the paradigms, the stories, the limiting beliefs, not being able to see my genius, not being able to see the value or connect the dots.
That’s another beautiful thing that I love to do — actually connect the dots across my work. AI can do that. AI can do that when you’re actually spending time with it. Not to replace humans, not to replace your team, but to amplify your work in the world and bring deeper value to your work in the world, because AI can see things we can’t see. And it is not limited by our own minds and our own stories.
Does this make sense? This is how I’m using AI.
I’ve gone the opposite direction of most entrepreneurs my size
I went down the rabbit hole for two seconds of trying to create agents that do things for me. Now, done.
In fact, I’ve probably gone the opposite direction of most entrepreneurs with a company of my size. I’ve actually hired more people. My team right now is bigger than it’s ever been since 2018 when I started my business. My team is bigger than it’s ever been.
Why? Because I want more human touch with our clients than ever before. Not less. I want community connection.
And yes, I want my team to be AI courageous and to leverage AI where appropriate — but to also know when we absolutely do not want to be using AI.
Let me give you an example of what I mean by this. I have someone on my team who’s been doing a phenomenal job of client communications. This is going to be over a thousand clients. Client communications around logistics, replays, the calendar. We have merch, so selling of our merch, or letting them know something that’s coming up.
I have no problem with AI being used to create the communications when it is around logistics and things like that.
But we are not going to use AI at all when we are creating a communication that is truly needing to be from the heart, or leading our clients, congratulating our clients, recognizing our clients. That needs to be human written.
And it needs to be, because we can tell, right? I mean, we all know now. It’s pretty obvious when we’re using AI, and I have no problem with it. But we are being very careful to use it where it’s appropriate, and then to use our human heart writing when that is called for.
I’m even noticing — it’s on LinkedIn right now, like heavy — but I’m already noticing it creeping into Substack. I can tell people are maybe screenshotting a note or an article, putting it into their AI to get a response that they can use in the comments to bolster themselves up and further their own self, which is what happens on LinkedIn. And I’m already seeing it happen on Substack.
But you can tell. You can see it, right?
So you have to be careful. We want to use AI where it makes sense.
My AI statement
Now in Substack there’s this controversy around AI and people using AI to write their stuff and all the things. I am very clear, and I have created my own AI statement.
And this is my AI statement. This is true for everything that I’m doing. Everything that I’m doing.
I speak it out. A podcast, a chapter of my book, whatever it’s going to be — I speak it all out, which has nothing to do with AI and everything to do with what’s in my mind, my heart, speaking it out.
And then I put that podcast out there, like I’m going to do with this one. But I take the transcript, and using my highly developed — and I mean highly developed — Claude projects that are fed with everything about me and my values and my IP and who my clients are and all the things, and what my rules are and what I expect: take my transcript. Do not put any of your words in it. Just take my transcript and make it into an article so people can read it.
And that’s what I do. It’s so powerful and it’s so, so effective.
To me, this is a way that feels really good to use AI. To be faster to market, faster to value, but still myself completely.
Cut out the noise and go all in
I wanted to share this perspective with you because there’s so much out there on how to use AI for all sorts of things. But I want you to really think of using AI and really taking the time and the energy and the focus and the effort.
I feed my AI my developed content every day. Every day I’m building that out. And it has a compound effect on helping my intellectual property, my thought leadership, what I’m teaching, what I’m bringing out into the world. How it’s impacting clients’ time to value is incredible.
So I wanted to share this perspective with you and invite you to be thinking about AI very differently.
While everyone’s arguing about AI — while everyone’s having either negative reactions to AI, or they’re over here trying to replace humans with AI — I’m just getting to work to deliver value to my people. To my sliver of humanity that I’m here to serve.
And you can be doing the same thing. Cut out all the noise and go all in, so that you can create more value to the people that you are here to serve.
And don’t be afraid to go the opposite direction and really lean into the human.
We have humans that reach out to all thousand of our people. I have someone that’s doing it. We have three — I don’t even like to use the word programs — we have three communities, I’ll say. We have our Substack Soapbox, we have our Red Rebelle Room, and we have our IGNITE Her® University. Those are the three things that we offer into the world. That is it. That’s all we do.
I have three people, one on each of those areas. I have someone on the Soapbox and all of the clients that are in the Soapbox. I have someone that’s on the Red Rebelle Room, and I have someone that’s in the IGNITE Her® University. They are proactively reaching out, connecting, serving those clients in those different communities.
It’s not AI. It’s not automation. It’s humans.
And it matters completely.
I hope this is inspiring. I hope that you can take some valuable things away from this episode today. And I’m excited to see what you create, and how you can bring your value at warp speed to the market by really developing your AI partner, your co-creative partner, to bring that legacy work out into the world.
All right, my beautiful friends. Have an incredible day.
— Julie
